Second mate struggled to keep Bounty's engines, pumps running

Bounty second mate Matthew Sanders looks at a binder of evidence as he is questioned about the bilge pump system during the U.S. Coast Guard hearing Monday in Portsmouth, Va. (STEVE EARLEY / The Virginian-Pilot)

PORTSMOUTH, Va. — Matthew Sanders stood in waist-deep water, electricity sparking and arcing all around him, as he worked in the dark to get the Bounty’s portside engine running again.

The water rose to his chest when the tall ship pitched, making his work frustratingly difficult.

But the second mate was able to restore power to the engine and buy the Bounty about three more hours in which to pump water from the bilge.

Sanders testified Monday at the U.S. Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board hearing into the sinking of the Bounty last October that killed Capt. Robin Walbridge and crew member Claudene Christian.

Sanders, a graduate of the Maine Maritime Academy, joined the Bounty last March. He said it was a professionally run ship.

“Everyone knew what their job was to do and did it,” he said, noting that Walbridge “was a good captain, someone I could learn from. Overall, I had high regard for him.”

Christopher Barksdale testified that he joined the crew in September as the ship’s engineer while the ship was in Boothbay, Maine, undergoing work.

He is not an engineer and does not have merchant mariner’s credentials but said he had about 30 years’ experience in horticulture, with equipment such as backhoes and tractors, and had worked on vessels for the U.S. Nature Conservancy, primarily on shore.

When he first saw the Bounty’s engines, he wanted to clean them.

“They looked like they had quite a few hours on them,” Barksdale said. “They just looked like they were old.”

The first he heard of a hurricane was right before the ship left Connecticut. Walbridge called the crew together and said if anyone felt uncomfortable, they could leave.

“I didn’t know what he was talking about,” said Barksdale, who was 56 at the time.

He said he was concerned and “briefly” considered leaving, but “I felt the captain had a pretty good plan of attack” and that the crew was capable. As their new engineer, Barksdale said he also felt an obligation to his shipmates.

Sanders, 37 at the time, said he was not worried.

“I looked at Robin’s history and experience and said to myself ... he has more experience than I do, and maybe I can learn from this.”

He said Walbridge did track the storm once they left Connecticut early in the evening of Friday, Oct. 26, and they had good weather and sailing Saturday as they prepared the ship for the storm.

Barksdale said at one point a crew member reported the port generator was “moving a lot.” He said he put it down to vibration and the length of time it had been in use. He turned the generator off to cool down and tightened the mounts.

Barksdale said he learned before they left port he had fuel filters with the wrong level of filtration, so he frequently changed them because he didn’t want them to get clogged and shut the generator down.

As the seas grew Sunday, Barksdale got ill and said he could only work in the hot engine room for 10 to 15 minutes at a time. When he went on deck to get air, he was thrown down and his hand was badly injured, then he took a rough spill in the engine room and hurt his leg.

Sunday afternoon, he went into the engine room to change a filter and noticed the sight glass on the tank with that day’s fuel allotment had smashed and the fuel had leaked out. The port engine wasn’t getting any fuel so it had shut down.

Then the starboard engine started surging heavily.

“It could have been any number of things,” Barksdale said, pointing out that Walbridge and the former engineer had rebuilt the generator. He discounted the possibility that air could have got into the line from an ill-fitting filter.

“And the water kept coming in, it just kept getting deeper,” Barksdale said. “It became pretty obvious we were in serious condition.”

Walbridge ordered the ship switched to a port tack so the hydraulic pump on the starboard side would pick up water in the bilge. Then a sail blew out, something Sanders said he had never seen before.

Barksdale said he could see water coming down the inside walls of the hull.

“To me, it looked like a pretty substantial amount of water coming in.”

The crew worked together to get water out of the bilge, keep debris out of the way and get systems working.

“It was a group effort, trying to keep things going,” Barksdale said.

As the storm worsened, he saw Walbridge take “a tremendous spill,” with a wooden table smashing into his back. “I don’t know how he got up,” Barksdale said. “I don’t know how he did it, but he did what he could.”

By 4 p.m. Sunday, Sanders said, there was more water in the bilge than he had ever seen.

The hydraulic pump stopped working twice because debris got caught in it. Each time, Sanders shut it down, cleaned it out and got it working.

The electric pumps kept functioning, but with the ship’s rocking, Sanders had to constantly work to keep the suction going.

At one point, the starboard engine started acting as if the fuel filter was clogged.

“It seemed like it wasn’t creating enough power,” and Sanders said the engine was starved for fuel, so he twice changed the filters on it, standing in the dark in thigh-deep water.

The boat rolled, but he was wedged in the small space so he said he wasn’t tossed around.

He got the starboard generator going again, but with no power for two hours, water had built up in the bilge.

Sanders went back to pumping out the bilge, “but eventually the water level got high enough it shorted out the generator. ... The starboard generator was completely fried. ... The generator system itself shorted out.”

So he changed his focus to trying to get the port engine going. He continued to work in the dark, only now the water was sloshing up to his chest.

Again, he was able to get the engine running, restoring power for three or four hours.

But by the early hours of Monday, Oct. 29, they had no power and it was clear the Bounty wasn’t going to make it. Everybody got into their immersion suits and went on deck.

Before Walbridge was able to abandon ship, a wave knocked the Bounty onto its starboard side. Sanders said he saw Walbridge hit the water on the deck between the mast at the back of the ship and the navigation shack.

“I think I saw Robin wash back and forth like three times in the wave action,” then he fell into the water when the boat rolled.

Sanders never saw him again.

Christian had been on the deck right beside Sanders when his leg got pinned in a yardarm.

“She was right next to me on deck when my leg was pinched. She was saying, ‘What do I do? What do I do?’ ”

He told her, “You just have to go for it,” and he saw her make her way to the back of the ship. The last time he saw her, she was hanging on to the rail that ran around the mizzen-mast.